Today, the KDE team invites interested testers and reviewers to give KDE 4.2.0-Beta1 a go. The release announcement lists some significant improvements. The purpose of this release is to get feedback from the community, preferably in the form of bugreports on the new bugs.kde.org bugtracker.
Beta1 offers critical features like the Eyes applet (an XEyes clone), but also a more streamlined user experience all over the workspace and applications.
With the KDE team being in bug fixing frenzy after the recent hard feature freeze, now is the time to help us smoothing the release for your pleasure starting in January.

He is absolutely right. Kubuntu was always a little broken (especially at translations), but with Intrepid and KDE 4.1.x it has reach a state of alpha-stability at my System. Enough to switch to another distri next weeks. Also, while i have Systems with other distris for testing-purpose, i can say it's really kubuntu which has the problems, and not KDE.

It's true I was using kubuntu and I did a test with intrepid. It's completely unusable. It's not possible to print, the plasmoid are crashind very often, fill bug report does nothing. Some of y bug report on launchpad are still valid even after 2 or 3 different version of kde, the bug have been corrected upstream most of the time but are still present in kubuntu (I let you imagine why), bug report seems to not be read by any packager. Kubuntu packager are passing more time to introduce problem by tuning kde than doing a real package with only upstream code. I know that they are very few, so why continue to change upstream code instead to just do a good package? No idea.

I switch to opensuse, I don't like the distribution maintenance (I'm used to debian like for years) but at least for kde it's the one to use and right now the only one!

It's really funny to see that most of kubuntu people which tried intrepid are really really disapointed. I told most I can believe that for some lucky people the problem are not visible (and I told also not visible).
For the printer I'm sorry but to configure it I had to go to gnome software to configure it, same things for bluetooth etc. But the thing that annoid me the most with kubuntu is the silence on the launchpad report and that the bug, corrected upstream, are still present on kubuntu. There are some time, really funny for a certain point of view, where the bug report have been consider as invalid by kubuntu team but investigate and corrected by upstream. A little bit strange, isn't it? Because of this and because everytime you are critisicm kubuntu I have been basically call a liar or insulted I decide to stop to use it. That's it and it's the beauty of linux. I'm not happy with one distribution I can try another one. I'm not happy with ubuntu so I'm using another distribution. It's a choice and it's mine but I'm pretty sur that most of the people, like me, which were the bug reporter using another distribution will have an impact, and a bad one, on the quality of the distribution. Point the problems of a distribution is not a shame.

>It's really funny to see that most of kubuntu people which tried intrepid are really really disapointed. I told most I can believe that for some lucky people the problem are not visible (and I told also not visible).

That is because those who are happy with it have no reason to complain. A silent majority.

>For the printer I'm sorry but to configure it I had to go to gnome software to configure it, same things for bluetooth etc.

Did the printer configuration tool in KMenu -> System not work? It works fine for me, and nobody has seen any bug reports about it not working at all.

>kubuntu is the silence on the launchpad report and that the bug, corrected upstream, are still present on kubuntu.

If the bug is fixed upstream it will be included in the next release, unless the fix was committed for something like KDE 4.2. There would be no way that the fix *couldn't* be not included unless we purposefully took the fix out of the tarball.

> There are some time, really funny for a certain point of view, where the bug report have been consider as invalid by kubuntu team but investigate and corrected by upstream.

Examples please? Bugs usually get invalidated because the reporter stops responding to requests for information. We can only find or report the issues upstream if we get proper information. But since they're fixed upstream I guess it really doesn't make a difference? Anyway, without examples this is a moot point anyway.

> A little bit strange, isn't it? Because of this and because everytime you are critisicm kubuntu I have been basically call a liar or insulted I decide to stop to use it.

Vague accusations with little to nothing to back them up is a good way to get that.

Wrong.
This was an issue in the Intrepid alphas, but both are living just fine with each other here on my Intrepid install. You really ought not assume that bugs that you found in beta are still present in the final release without actually checking.
Basically the problem was that the old version of libkipi and libkipi5 (one was a dependency of digikam and the other of gwenview) both were installing icons to the same location. Was fixed here: https://edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/libkipi/0.1.6-1ubuntu1

> For the printer I'm sorry but to configure it I had to go to gnome software to
> configure it, same things for bluetooth etc. But the thing that annoid me the
> most with kubuntu is the silence on the launchpad report and that the bug,
> corrected upstream, are still present on kubuntu.

Strange, I've never had an easier experience printing than on Kubuntu Intrepid the other day. I plugged in a printer I'd never used before, and went to print, and there was the printer and it printed!

OpenSUSE backports functionality that should not be in an earlier release than whas released by the KDE maintainers. OpenSUSE guys do it with their best intention, sure, but also the KDE guys, so you have to choose who do you trust more, mommy or daddy.

Even with Shuttleworth becoming a KDE patron and all, Kubuntu still feels like an afterthought of the Ubuntu project. Their KDE experience feels often uneven and unpolished, a lot of that might stem from the completely inane decision to use Qt-based apps for anything, regardless of the quality of what's available. This results in a lot of default tools that aren't up to snuff, which is especially dire when it comes to anything system-related. For instance, while I've used that distro from the Breezy or Dapper releases (don't remember exactly) all the way through to Hardy I still wonder what Adept is supposed to accomplish. Not meaning any disrespect to its devs, but there's not a single Kubuntu user I am aware of who does not use Synaptic. And don't get me started on the slew of GTK apps with unnecessary GNOME dependencies, i.e. Inkscape.

Anyway, I recently jumped ship to OpenSUSE 11.0, since YaST is desktop agnostic and has seen a lot of improvement lately, particularly in terms of package management. Plus I'm not forced to upgrade my entire distro, just to check out a new KDE release.

Sadly but true, KDE is a second class citizen in Ubuntu.
The switch to KDE4 is done with way to few manpower. And many features are integrated into GNOME 1-2 versions eariler.
I switched to OpenSUSE because of it's really nice KDE support. Mandriva was an option too.

I have to very sadly agree with all the people bitching about Kubuntu, and especially it's Intrepid incarnation. Yet, I still use and will likely continue to do so, and file the odd bug report, and hope it gets better. Lots of stuff seriously broke for me when upgrading to Intrepid. Lots of struggles. I hope KDE 4.2 upgrade fixes some of those that haven't been fixed yet.

Some specifics for the rude fellow demanding such:

- icons in konqueror and other places being very confused
- konqueror plugins disappearing (still can't figure this out, so use firefox most of the time now --- firefox integration with Kubuntu has always been very poor and continues to be...)
- the new adept manager being generally horrible in a few ways (but at least it's significantly faster)
- network manager being way more confusing for wireless and manual net config
- digikam being left at KDE3, and broken in a few places because of it (some of those issues fixed now, but some not)

There's more, but I have limited time.

Of course KDE 4 itself is not all wonderful either. Mainly the file view plasmoid vs desktop paradigm continues to be awkward and painful. I've installed it for newbies and they all hate it. The new 'start menu' is pretty terribly awkward for navigating (i'm using lancelot now, which is pretty neat in many ways, but pretty heavy/ugly in some ways).

Ah well. Growing pains. KDE seems to have a lot of them. But it's still the best.

I stick with Kubuntu mainly because I see it as the best chance of getting KDE/Linux into my workplace. So i use it everywhere I can. Otherwise I'd probably go to ArchLinux.

Heh, yeah Adept's search sure ain't perfect, that's for sure. (And putting it nicely :P) But it's still young... At least it's not crashing all the time and, as you mentioned, runs a lot faster than 2.x ever did. :-)

I believe the NetworkManager plasmoid most distros will ship with their next release should fix those issues.

The more recent Digikam betas now depend on libraries provided by KDE 4.2's kdegraphics module. Unfortunately, since we are not shipping KDE 4.2 we cannot provide the latest beta, and it is simply bad practice to include old betas in a final release. (Very impolite to the Digikam devs)

Hope I could have been of help. It's much nicer talking to people who I can actually help, as opposed to vague bashing, and I thank you for voicing your pain points in a civil manner.

Frankly, on Intrepid, the bugs were so many and so in my face that filing bug reports seemed a waste of time - and in fact the kde-4.1.3 packages in backports actually did fix the most obvious ones, like I expected.
After toying with kde-4.1.3 for a few minutes, I went back to kde-3.5.10 though, there's still so much that cannot be done with kde4.

For example I could not set hue etc on background of the desktop, even though I could set it for the background of the login screen - why?

I use Adept. What's the problem with it? It does what I want it to: search for and install packages. If you're serious about an apt distro, use apt-get. The latest KDE 4.2 BETA packages for Kubuntu are quite nice. Believe me, I thought Kubuntu 8.10 was garbage and just left it on one machine because I couldn't be bothered to take it off(using bb instead). When 4.2 BETA packages became available, I upgraded, and what an improvement. Of course the MySQL bullshit is quite a shocker, but that is *not* Kubuntu's issue. That just gives me a bit of insight into the minds of the devs. If the devs are thinking: "We'll use MySQL until SQLite is ready for us." then I understand. It's a pain, but I understand. KDE4 might be BETA all the way till KDE 4.9. But, but, if they are thinking, "Oh brilliant! MySQL is perfect for what *we* need and it's what we'll use." Then fine. Be like that and stick it to your use base. I understand how FOSS works. If I released some code under and OS license, I would say STFU to whiners. However, KDE devs and patrons should *not* position themselves as some kind of MS or corporate environment with the current attitudes they have. 80% of the software I use is FOSS. However, I'm not your average user and I don't really care about listening to music from my desktop. From my console, now that I regard as important. ;)

I stopped building slackware packages after the 3.5.x release after doing it for many years. I hoped that someone will do the job but unfortunatly no one did it :(
(Robby Workman is providing packages in /testing of -current)

As at home the babies finally do their nights :), and I need KDE upgrades on Slackware, I will provide packages again.

I have been using Slackware since 1997 and KDE since the same year (it was version 0.8 by then).

I believe I can help you there. Nowadays I am running Bluewhite64 (which is an unofficial port of slackware to x86_64) and I have been making KDE-4 packages for it (same process as in Slack). But since I have a VM with Slackware 12.1 (or I can create another with another version) I believe I can help you there.

Well, I read a lot of "new shiny features and bug fixes" in announcement but I did not sow real fixes that really annoyed users. Hope panel now can be resized vertically, other number then 3 desktops available with compiz, keyboard switcher can cycle on 2 layouts and a lot of good things that where in KDE3 but disappeared in KDE4.

Yes, I see, icons can be placed now on desktop. Thank you very very very much!

As always, KDE public relation people eager with promises of heaven but reality is not so good as they say.

I do understand that the KDE team is not paid for their work, and we should be grateful for what they do. I do understand that time is needed to reimplement the missing features, and we should not expect every KDE 3.5 feature to be here from the beginning.

But what really pisses me off, is that whole PR coming with KDE4, telling me how great and awesome KDE4 is, while the reality is quite different. If what you have is an unfinished beta, then, for God's sake, TELL IT CLEARLY it's an unfinished beta. Don't tell me it is a replacement for KDE 3.5, as it doesn't look like we're get there at least until 4.3, and possibly even 4.4.

I really like where KDE is going with KDE4. I see the possibilities given by the new infrastructure, and I respect the work put there to create it. But DON'T make promises it isn't (yet) able to fulfill. It is NOT a finished desktop, and don't market it as such until it gets reasonably finished.

I sometime wonder if the non-marketing approach done in the KDE 3.x days (due to lack of people interested in that) should have been kept. The amount of people just coming out of the woods for complaining about "promises" not being kept is annoying.

Well actually, my understanding was that the promise of great things was based on a new vision the developers had for the desktop. That vision was a lot different from KDE3, so they may not have necessarily implemented features from KDE3. However, because of constant complaining about missing features (relative to KDE3), they have gone back and implemented many of them. Being different, as you say, does not make it less awesome. It just makes it different. For 4.3, Aaron has stated that they will refocus on the vision they had for KDE4, and I for one am looking forward to what it might look like.

As far as replacing KDE 3.5? It may not for you, but I am already using it a lot more than 3.5 and have not missed a thing. So for me it is already fulfilling my needs and can only get better. And to your last point, I hope it never becomes a finished desktop. I hope it will always continue to grow and innovate.

> . However, because of constant complaining about missing features (relative to KDE3), they have gone back and implemented many of them.

You have a point, but it's not entirely accurate. Some plasma developers indeed focused on getting features back because people started to complain too much.

However, the main reason why those features were gone wasn't because they had a different vision. They were only _temporary_ gone because those features couldn't be ported in time for KDE 4.0. ...and delaying a release for a full year would be more devastating.

(...and for some reason, people instantly thought those features were removed on purpose...)

Most people can't understand that kde has gone 7 steps back, to move 1 step forward (and is now just at step 3 or 4). It's not logical that a Major-Version of a long grown Software get published striped off of every grown advantage.

No, they didn't go 7 steps back to move 1 step forward. They had to redesign all the cruft designs which accumulated in the span of KDE 2.x-3.5.x, the beginning of 2000 until 2006, most of which commanded binary compatibility for new changes so fundamental redesigns were postponed to the next major release. The redesigns mostly got necessary as the then status quo became harder to maintain by the day, a worst case scenario for a project like KDE relying on voluntary developers working for them while ideally having fun doing so.

Then Qt 4 itself turned out to be a major redesign over Qt 3 so KDE developers opted to not only do the accumulated postponed improvements, but also adapt all the frameworks to new concepts of Qt. Those were the areas with the most work since once finished major changes can't be done anymore without breaking binary compatibility. But applications developers also waited until all the frameworks were finished so they needn't to adapt their apps to changes again and again. The frameworks are done with the release of KDE 4.0, which is why it was a major release for all involved. Now it's the time that the application and interface (not only from KDE but also Qt Software, X.org, NVidia etc.) developers are playing catch up. The end result is ideally a collection of frameworks and applications which can stay at the cutting edge of technology and interface design while being relatively easy to maintain for like the next decade.

Always keep in mind that after the big redesigns between KDE 1 and 2, it took 6 years to reach the pinnacle that is KDE 3.5.x. KDE 4 is only the second major rethought of the project, and not even a year passed yet since its release and all the progresses and possibilities are already plenty visible.

That's all unimportant for an enduser. They only see a new Major-Version which get ripped of everthing worthy. And also a year later, the situation hasn't changed much. So, following on the usual experience with software and oss, it normal to thing that the desirable state is far away and the software has become trash.

1) KDE 4.2 will be (is in svn) better™ than the latest KDE 3.5. At least for me
2) When going from KDE 1 to 2, progress was obvious from the start because 1 was so simple[1]. When going from 2 to 3, there was _no_ progress, but no regression, and it took 3.1 and 3.2 to show that progress had indeed occurred. Now this last change, 3 to 4 is even more important, and so there is some regression. however...
3) the new foundations are so good that all the goodness[2] in 3.5 could be reproduced within a year. So basically, dev speed is increased by a factor 3.
4) 4.2 is this release where 3.5 looks aged. 4.3 is the release where 3.5 looks as silly as KDE 1 compared to KDE 3.

This is not a question of geeks and their audience, it is a question that open source development works well in the open, with incremental releases that might be broken and little fear of rewriting for the sake of code beauty. That is, if the coders are good.

And KDE coders are world class.

[1] Still, I wish dolphin was as fast as kfm -- but on the other hand it is faster on larger directories and does so much more...
[2] I assume you talk about the desktop shell, because the apps were already an improvement from 4.0

In a project driven by developers (like KDE still is) the developers are the actual end users. Distributions are secondary end users (they could easily be "first class" end users if they worked more closely with upstreams, something that mostly happens only in the kernel and server space). The end users of distributions are, well, end users of the distributions with all the pros and cons inhereted (see Aaron Seigo's recent blog entries for problems caused by the lack of communication between up-/downstreams).

I doubt you actually use KDE though, the progress since 4.0.0 has been very visible.

To the project's survival the only people mattering are those who contribute in some way. "Plain" users, "complainers" etc. are nice (or not so nice) to have, but don't really matter much to the project's existence in the end.

KDE's amount of svn accounts and commits are on a steady upward slope. Going by this everythings fine.

This is very interesting irrelevant of the discussion about the features above.

In addition to being a KDE user and sympathizer for a long time, I manage couple of research projects quite similar in structure -at least in spirit- to what you guys do. Just like yours, people are mostly voluntarily involved in my projects and the output is open for all to see and criticize.

According to my experience, I believe you are making a grave mistake regarding who matters. Of course you are right in the short run. However, in the long run the people you dismiss matter even more than short term contributors. Because those "whiners" are nothing but noisy elements of a huge group of real users like me, who rarely come out and say something. With whiners signal to noise ratio may be low but filters can be deployed in some form.

If I were you, I would worry when nobody says anything or only a small core group (like the one you favor so much) cheers. Because then, it is only a matter of time until the project dies. Without a large base, where do you think the real contributors will come from? If large groups of people do not find KDE useful, do you really believe that you will still have tons of real contributors involved? Of course not. I think developers intuitively know this, too, for they accommodate user wishes to some extend regardless of original plans.

Finally, my thanks for all the great work. I have been waiting for KDE 4 to mature for almost a year now and I think 4.2 will be the point where I will switch finally from KDE 3!

I think your definition of a "contributor" is more strict than what I would have liked for my above post. To me a contributor is someone who contributes something that either is directly usable by the project or indirectly motivates another contributor to do something (more).

By that definition "plain" users from whom the project gets neither direct nor indirect feedback at all could as well not exist. "Complainers" only rise the noise ratio and make the place where they tend to complain unproductive. But contributors can contribute as easily as making fitting constructive criticism at the right place to the right person, giving as simple "thumb up" "I like that" response to a particular new feature described by a developer on his blog or in a mailing list. Stuff like that are building a positive environment.

Dot with its high noise ratio is a rather good example for a unproductive environment, too many people who give unconstructive criticism or show plain pessimism or even malice. It's no suprise not many of the actual developers come here anymore, and the forum upgrade to the dot with the capability of voting comments up or down is way, way overdue indeed. This, along with other places turning unpleasant, has made the community more fragmented than necessary. E.g. kde-apps.o is a great place with plenty fresh contributors and a very vivid community, it's really unfortunate it's not more closely connected to the core KDE project. The question of course is if communities just become completely unmaintainable after reach a specific size. E.g. bugs.k.o always has been on the verge of maintainability even without much of the noise here, while developers are demotivated by the amounts of reports and users angered about the lack of feedback.

If you don't want to use unfinished software, use the kde3 series. Everything still works.

If you want to see how a desktop is built, how the process happens, where the resources are lacking, where brilliant ideas are implemented, where shortcuts are taken and ultimately fixed properly, how incremental improvements are made, and how with time, care and hours of work just about everything comes together as envisioned, use KDE4.

Free software has a very unfortunate characteristic. The best experience comes to participants.

Otherwise all you have is whatever is there for free.

As for the geeks/audience dichotomy, there would be no audience without the geeks.

"But what really pisses me off, is that whole PR coming with KDE4, telling me how great and awesome KDE4 is, while the reality is quite different."

Question: who made you the person to make that judgement? I use KDE4 all the time, and I think it's great. To claim that "KDE4 sucks!" is a personal opinion, it's not an universal truth you try to make it sound like.

"I really like where KDE is going with KDE4. I see the possibilities given by the new infrastructure, and I respect the work put there to create it. But DON'T make promises it isn't (yet) able to fulfill. It is NOT a finished desktop, and don't market it as such until it gets reasonably finished."

"While KDE 4.1 aims at being the first release suitable for early adopting users, some features you are used to in KDE 3.5 are not implemented yet. The KDE team is working on those and strives to make them available in one of the next releases. While there is no guarantee that every single feature from KDE 3.5 will be implemented, KDE 4.1 already provides a powerful and feature-rich working environment."

No one says that KDE 4 is a KDE 3 replacement yet/or a finished desktop.
KDE 4 is stable enough for everyday use, and there are no missing features that blocks you from using as a working environment.

I remember the days when KDE 3.0 was out. There were a lot of unimplemented features. IMO KDE 3.3 was the "first" version of KDE 3 series.